Lord of the Rings

On Wednesday, the New York Times ran a front-page story about the imprisonment of human-rights activists in China as the Olympic Games approach. The headline reads “DISSIDENT’S ARREST HINTS AT OLYMPIC CRACKDOWN.” In an online interview posted in Der Spiegel earlier this week, the Beijing-based artist Ai Wei Wei summed up the situation more bluntly: “The Olympics are a propaganda show.” The controversial artist has been an outspoken opponent of the Games since last August—a somewhat counterintuitive position, given his collaboration on the design of the Olympic Stadium with the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. Then again, as Ai told Der Spiegel, “Artists are already seen as slightly crazy.”—Andrea K. Scott